Directing Art by Mapin Publishing

Ebrahim Alkazi

Dave-Mukherji

Directing Art

The Making of a Modern Indian Art World

www.mapinpub.com

MAPIN PUBLISHING

Printed in India

MAPIN PUBLISHING

Ebrahim Alkazi

The Making of a Modern Indian Art World

Ebrahim Alkazi: Directing Art is the inaugural volume of a series of six publications. Subsequent volumes will include select reprints from the Art Heritage journals and catalogues that accompanied exhibitions over a period spanning nearly four decades, from 1977 onwards.

www.artheritagegallery.com

Directing Art

Parul Dave-Mukherji is former Dean at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and has authored several works on global and Indian art history. Partha Mitter is a writer and historian of art and culture, specializing in the reception of Indian art in the West. Yashodhara Dalmia is an art historian and independent curator based in New Delhi. Amal Allana was Chairperson of the National School of Drama, and has directed over 60 plays for the stage. Devika Singh is a critic and art historian, focusing on Indian modern and contemporary art and its international contexts. Shukla Sawant is professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and has been involved in several biennales and artist-led initiatives. Akansha Rastogi is a curator at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art.

Ebrahim Alkazi

Directing Art

The Making of a Modern Indian Art World

Edited by Parul Dave-Mukherji

Featuring essays by and conversations with leading practitioners and art historians, Directing Art places Alkazi’s contribution within a historical as well as critical context. While Amal Allana reveals Alkazi’s twin passion for modern theatre and art through a familial narrative, Yashodhara Dalmia underlines his contribution to the public reception for modern art. Focusing on Bombay, Shukla Sawant looks beyond the English speaking elite audience, towards the vernacular one which continued to underpin Alkazi’s understanding of the community at large. Devika Singh revisits the post-Independence Indian art scene to contextualize the emergence of Art Heritage and Akansha Rastogi explores the history of art exhibitions curated by Alkazi through the trope of a ‘ghost’ exhibition. Following Parul Dave-Mukherji’s revealing interview with eminent artist and Alkazi’s long-standing friend, K.G. Subramanyam, in conclusion, Partha Mitter reflects on the latter’s role as an art patron. Richly illustrated with select artworks from the Alkazi Collection, this volume is the first of a growing series and provides a critical context for the publication of art writings and exhibitions shown at Art Heritage. A chronicle of the remarkable life and work of Ebrahim Alkazi, Directing Art hence provides an invaluable education in Indian art through its contextual analysis of the modern and contemporary. With 408 illustrations

Ebrahim Alkazi

Directing Art

The Making of a Modern Indian Art World

A doyen of India’s art and theatre scenes, Ebrahim Alkazi has been credited with garnering worldwide visibility for Indian art. Ebrahim Alkazi: Directing Art acknowledges Alkazi’s lifelong commitment to modern and contemporary art in India through his establishment of Art Heritage gallery and an art journal in New Delhi. Drawing from his experience as the first Director of the National School of Drama, how does he arrive at innovative modes of curating modern art and envisaging the public? Realizing quite early in his career that art writing was germane to art reception, Alkazi edited a journal for four decades from 1977 onwards; its early years coinciding with the politically tumultuous period of the Emergency. Featuring essays by and conversations with leading practitioners and art historians, Directing Art places Alkazi’s contribution within a historical as well as critical context. While Amal Allana reveals Alkazi’s twin passion for modern theatre and art through a familial narrative, Yashodhara Dalmia underlines his contribution to the public reception for modern art. Focusing on Bombay, Shukla Sawant looks beyond the English speaking elite audience, towards the vernacular one which continued to underpin Alkazi’s understanding of the community at large. Devika Singh revisits the post-Independence Indian art scene to contextualize the emergence of Art Heritage and Akansha Rastogi explores the history of art exhibitions curated by Alkazi through the trope of a ‘ghost’ exhibition. Following Parul Dave-Mukherji’s revealing interview with eminent artist and Alkazi’s long-standing friend, K.G. Subramanyam, in conclusion, Partha Mitter reflects on the latter’s role as an art patron. Richly illustrated with select artworks from the Alkazi Collection, this volume is the first of a growing series and provides a critical context for the publication of art writings and exhibitions shown at Art Heritage. A chronicle of the remarkable life and work of Ebrahim Alkazi, Directing Art hence provides an invaluable education in Indian art through its contextual analysis of the modern and contemporary. With 408 illustrations

Ebrahim Alkazi

Directing Art

Ebrahim Alkazi

Directing Art

The Making of a Modern Indian Art World

Edited by Parul Dave-Mukherji

with contributions by Amal Allana, Yashodhara Dalmia, Shukla Sawant, Devika Singh, Akansha Rastogi and Partha Mitter

in association with

MAPIN PUBLISHING

First published in India in 2016 by Mapin Publishing 706 Kaivanna, Panchavati, Ellisbridge Ahmedabad 380006 INDIA T: +91 79 40228228 | F: +91 79 40228201 E: mapin@mapinpub.com | www.mapinpub.com and Art Heritage Gallery Triveni Kala Sangam, 205, Tansen Marg New Delhi 110001 INDIA T: +91 11 23719470 artheritagegallery@gmail.com | www.artheritagegallery.com Simultaneously published in the United States of America in 2016 by Grantha Corporation 77 Daniele Drive, Hidden Meadows Ocean Township, NJ 07712 E: mapin@mapinpub.com

Ebrahim Alkazi: Directing Art was launched on January 30, 2016, at the India Art Fair, with a panel discussion comprising the authors. Publishers are grateful to the following organisations: • Theatre & Television Associates, New Delhi • Jayraj Fine Paper Co., Mumbai, towards partial support of Galgo Rendezvous Natura paper • Parksons Graphics, Mumbai, towards partial support for printing All texts commissioned by Art Heritage. Text © authors All images © The Alkazi Collection of Art except those listed in Image Credits (see p. 362). All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. ISBN: 978-93-85360-10-7 (Mapin) ISBN: 978-1-935677-68-0 (Grantha) LCCN: 2016900645 Copyediting: Shyama Warner / Freelance Editor and Suguna Ramanathan / Mapin Editorial Editorial Assistance: Ayesha Matthan / Alkazi Foundation and Neha Manke / Mapin Editorial Design: Amal Allana / Art Heritage and Paulomi Shah / Mapin Design Studio Production Assistance: Vijay Ajad / Alkazi Foundation, Gopal Limbad and Rakesh Manger / Mapin Design Studio and Naveen Printers (Delhi) Printed at Parksons Graphics, Mumbai

Front Cover: E. Alkazi, Self-portrait, mid-1940s, 22 x 16 in (56 x 41 cm) © The Alkazi Collection of Art Front Endpaper: E. Alkazi’s note on Indian art on a newspaper clipping, mid-1990s E. Alkazi’s note on Rabindranath Tagore’s paintings Landscapes, Man and Women, mid-1990s E. Alkazi, Thinking Figure and Nude, Ink on Paper, mid-1950s Page 2: M.F. Husain, An Actor’s Family, 1959 (see p. 44) Page 6: E. Alkazi at Cop Shiva’s exhibition, Art Heritage, New Delhi, 2013–14 Back Endpaper: E. Alkazi, Thinking Figure and Nude, Ink on Paper, mid-1950s E. Alkazi’s note on Rabindranath Tagore’s paintings for Indian Art and Modernism, Doordarshan documentary, mid-1990s Invitation for an exhibition of E. Alkazi’s drawings and paintings at Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay, 1952 Back Cover: E. Alkazi and Roshen Alkazi with Nissim Ezekiel and H.A. Gade at the opening of Akbar Padamsee’s exhibition at Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay, 1952 (see p. 11)

CONTENTS

Preface Amal Allana

Introduction Ebrahim Alkazi: Directing Art Parul Dave-Mukherji 8

Interweaving Art Practices Art Heritage 1977–1982 Select exhibitions

272

Editorials

A Space for Thought . . . Amal Allana

Appendices

Our Art Exhibitions (Jan. 1954)

274

Sponsoring Art (July 1954)

275

Essays on Western Modernism 62

Tendencies in European Art (Feb. 1954)

277

Exhibition of German Art (Mar. 1956)

278

Ebrahim Alkazi in Conversation

Käthe Kollwitz (Nov. 1958)

279

Yashodhara Dalmia 72

The Precursors of Modern Art—Van Gogh,

Modernism and Indian Art

Art Heritage 1983–1988 Select exhibitions

‘This is Modern Art’ Experiments in Outreach, Art Writing and Exhibition Making in Bombay (1950s-1960s) Shukla Sawant

Art Heritage 1989–1995 Select exhibitions

120

136

Gauguin, Cézanne (Dec. 1958)

281

Through the Heart of Darkness (Jan. 1959)

282

The Ascent of the Mont St Victoire (Feb. 1959)

283

The Cubist Revolution (June 1959)

285

The Flowering Spirit (Sept. 1959)

287

Jacob Epstein (Dec. 1959)

291

Contemporary Art (Nov. 1959)

294

Essays on Indian Modernism The Progressive Artists Group Exhibition:

Ebrahim Alkazi and Exhibition Making Revisiting the Post-Independence Art Scene Devika Singh

152

Art Heritage 1995–2000 Select exhibitions

168

Around Exhibitions: Circles of Engagement

An Evasion of Responsibility (Mar. 1954) The Works of Tyeb Mehta (Oct. 1959) Arrows Quivering in My Neck—Words and Lines (1960)

297 299 301

Akansha Rastogi

182

E. Alkazi Theatre Time Line 1941–1996 306

Art Heritage Season 2001–2006 Select exhibitions

204

Art Heritage Time Line 1977–2015 320

Alkazi’s ‘Six Artists in Black and White’

Conversation with K.G. Subramanyan Parul Dave-Mukherji

220

Art Heritage 2007–2013 Select exhibitions

232

Select Bibliography

359

Index 360 Image Credits

Portrait of a Nationalist: Ebrahim Alkazi Partha Mitter

240

Art Heritage 2014–2016 Select exhibitions

264

362

Acknowledgements 363 Contributors 364

Preface

At the impressionable age of 26 years, E. Alkazi worked with steadfast clarity, relying on his own aesthetic judgment to openly support new artistic talent through the columns of his modest magazine, Theatre Unit Bulletin. As his daughter, I saw my father as a mentor who straddled the worlds of theatre and art quite seamlessly, and hence ‘Directing’ and ‘Art’ elucidate a general thrust, giving focus to both theatre and exhibition making. He understood these independent yet linked disciplines as ‘performances’, ephemeral in nature, enacting a moment and hence, witnesses to change. The establishment of The Theatre Group, a small yet energetic multidisciplinary arts institution, punctuates life in Bombay, particularly after his return from England in 1951. Here the ground for future endeavours is prepared as Alkazi meticulously and intelligently reviewed and discussed scholarly material around contemporary art, offering talks and readings on literature, poetry and cinema. In this publication, as we gather data for such collective experiences, often the encounter with lived memories provides a complex trace of the past, as they go beyond time, enhanced by a sense of receptivity and effect. For this reason, Ebrahim Alkazi: Directing Art puts together conversations with an eminent artist and historian, and subsequently, for the first time, tabulated and cross-referenced factual information—Alkazi’s plays as well as the exhibitions mounted at Art Heritage gallery till recently. As we see his life and work unravel, we come to terms with an educator who was continuously living in the present, but simultaneously preparing for the future. He felt the responsibility of safeguarding and sharing knowledge, keeping one step ahead of himself, and thinking of continuity and evolution as the essences of the life of art. As a consequence, this initiative is the very first increment in a series of offerings from his growing archive, looking to enhance and consolidate a carefully pieced collection of the visual and performing arts.

Introduction Ebrahim Alkazi: Directing Art Parul Dave-Mukherji

I will start with a few disavowals. Ebrahim Alkazi: Directing Art is not a simple hagiography of Ebrahim Alkazi or a mere celebration of his seminal contribution to the art scene in India. It is not only about exhibitions that were mounted at Art Heritage gallery in Delhi or the art writing that appeared in the pages of the Art Heritage journal edited by Alkazi. Nor does it aim to highlight his circle of friends and his association with key figures of the art world, who shaped notions of art practice and discourse in the context of modern and contemporary Indian art. It is not a wistful revisiting of a pre-1990s moment in this narrative when art critics and art writers offered judicious criticism and took positions around issues concerning modern art in India. Nor is it about nostalgia for a time when state art institutions had relevance, when artists engaged with each other’s works and debated with critics who, in turn, shaped public opinion—and this, relatively free, of the pull of the art market as we know it today. While keeping its focus on Art Heritage—a key institution set up by Alkazi—this volume sets out a specific narrative of modern Indian art through the singularity of events associated with his practices of collecting, curating, editing, and art writing. In the interstitial space between theatre and art, Alkazi occupies a distinct conjuncture. (Fig. 1) This volume locates Alkazi and his eclectic practices within the context of the wider art world that unfolded from the late 1970s, offering insight into postcolonial cultural modernity in India at large. Its focus is city centric, given the centrality of the metropolitan cities of Bombay1 and Delhi in this narrative as the locus of art reception and art writing, apart from their being the site of commercial, cultural, and political capital. These cities not only had art galleries and state art institutions like the Jehangir Art Gallery (Bombay), the National Gallery of Modern Art, and the Lalit Kala Akademi (both in Delhi), but also publishing houses that brought out art magazines and journals like Marg, Thought, Contra, Journal of Arts and Ideas and the Lalit Kala Contemporary, among others. (Figs. 2a–2c) While this volume offers a tribute to Alkazi, acknowledging his immense contribution to the making, dissemination and public reception of modern Indian art, it also offers a view of his affiliations with several artists and critics whose association, to a large extent, helped him to realize his aspirations. (Figs. 3a–3c) Moving beyond Alkazi’s conviviality with artists and critics, the narrative also touches upon disagreements and conflicts that marked his forays into curatorial initiatives, art writing, and his ways of engaging with the public. Interestingly, in these years, his sister Munira too became an artist whose works are representative of an expanding moment in modern art. (Figs. 4a–4c) For artists and critics who had witnessed the repressive regime of Emergency (1975–77), it was not just consensus around aesthetic notions or curatorial strategies but also myriad little differences of opinion that were of value. And it is in this vibrant atmosphere of Delhi in the late 1970s that Alkazi set about realizing his vision

Pages 8â&#x20AC;&#x201C;9: Fig. 1 E. Alkazi in his studio, Matheran, 1947 Above left: Fig. 2a E. Alkazi and Shirin Vajifdar at the opening of an exhibition, Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay, 1952 Above right: Fig. 2b Roshen Alkazi, Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay, 1950s

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Fig. 2c E. Alkazi and Roshen Alkazi (seated) with Nissim Ezekiel (right) and H.A. Gade at the opening of Akbar Padamseeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s exhibition at the Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay, 1952 The controversial painting Lovers behind them led to the painting being banned on the grounds of nudity.

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for a modern Indian art. This vision drew as much from a cosmopolitan international modernism2 as from the reality of India with its uneven modernity and contradictions at various levels: elite versus the vernacular; cities versus the towns; English versus Bengali/ Gujarati/ Marathi/ Kannada and many other regional languages. It would be more accurate to say Art Heritage has been considered as the site on which major art trends and narratives of modernism have cohered. At a time when the art world in Delhi was dominated largely by a few state art institutions and a handful of private art galleries, Art Heritage came to acquire a status similar to the former. Regarded today as an institution unto himself, when Alkazi ventured into the art world in partnership with his wife, Roshen, during the late 1970s, he saw a daunting task cut out for him.3 Setting up an art gallery and offering patronage to artists was only one challenge; equally important was to align himself with the viewer and approach modern art through the site of its public reception. (Figs. 5a–5d) Rather than addressing only the ‘converted’, he wanted to expand the constituency, which, according to him, was possible only by making art accessible to the public at large. For him, the ideal public was somewhere between a pedant with excessive knowledge and a snob who pretends to have full knowledge: ‘The pedant and the snob typify the two extremes of failure in the appreciation of the arts. Of the two, the snob is undoubtedly more common . . . Such an individual also discredits art in the eyes of those not interested in it. That is why the general public, when it thinks of the art lover, remembers only the hatefully superior attitude of the snob.’4

Facing page: Fig. 3a Installation with E. Alkazi’s charcoal drawings and his sister Munira Alkazi’s etchings, Shridharani Gallery, New Delhi, 1964 The Crucifixation (in the centre) by E. Alkazi was acquired by the Chandigarh Museum, Punjab University.

Above: Fig. 3b E. Alkazi’s drawing of Christ on the cover of the first issue of the Theatre Group Bulletin, December 1952 Below: Fig. 3c E. Alkazi, Untitled, 1960s, Charcoal on handmade paper, 17 x 20 in (56 x 93 cm)

It is here that his long years of theatre experience proved to be instructive and prepared him to deal with India’s complex public sphere, divided as it has been between the English speaking elite and the vernacular public. Although it is the former that he addressed more directly, as English was their dominant language of communication, for the latter, he adopted both a direct and a circuitous approach—for instance, he would occasionally get writings in Bengali and Hindi translated into English so as to offer to the readers discourses on art that arose from different contexts. At a time when debates on art were caught up within the tradition/modernity bind, Alkazi sought the regional as the bridge that could link the two and prevent the undue privileging of Euro-American modernism. It translated into an anachronistic reading of the modern, or reading it against its grain, so to speak, as a conscious agenda of connecting the modern genres of painting and sculpture with ritual practices, temples, folk and tribal artisanal practices, which constituted what he considered to be the broad Indic matrix of culture.5 Situating Art Heritage Publication of art journals and art magazines after Independence was slow to emerge. In 1946, the founding of the art magazine Marg by Mulk Raj Anand in Bombay—devoted to modernist design and its applicability to everyday life—marked an important moment for the newly independent nation to showcase its culturally rich past. Apart from other art magazines that followed, like Thought—to which the art critic Richard Bartholomew contributed from 1950s—and the short-lived Contra, started by the artist J. Swaminathan in 1966, there were art manifestos in which artists voiced their views on art.6 When the first issue of Art Heritage appeared in 1978, Marg was clearly the most widely-read art magazine in English. A quick glance through the issues of Art Heritage from its first issue in 1978 to date reveals not only how it transitioned from being an art magazine to an art journal within just a few years of its inception, but the broad lens through which categories of art and culture came to be viewed. What started as a move to give a longer shelf life to catalogue articles—based on works exhibited at the Art Heritage gallery—subsequently deepened its remit and offered itself as a platform for serious art writing.

As Alkazi invited some of the leading art critics and art writers to contribute to Art Heritage, it evolved from a magazine into a space for art criticism of modern and contemporary Indian art. Art critics and art historians like Jaya Appasamy, Richard Bartholomew, Geeta Kapur, Prayag Shukla, Mala Marwah, Sadanand Menon, Krishna Chaitanya, Ashish Rajadhyaksha, among others, periodically contributed to the journal. In addition to giving a space in the journal to artists to speak on their own works, Alkazi also invited art and literary critics’ contribution in order to ensure more objective analyses of artists’ works. Alkazi considered it imperative that the reader of the journal was not only informed about the art works but also got a glimpse of the artist through a photograph. This format of the journal, which was designed to give prominence to artist’s biographies, reveals the modernist in Alkazi. In 1982, with the launch of the Journal of Art and Ideas in the wake of postcolonial studies, there was a shift from art criticism to art theory which later anticipated the rise of the curator.7 Informed by a Marxist cultural politics, it adopted a socially radical agenda of relating cultural practices with democracy and citizenship, but in terms of its readership, it tended to address only a niche audience. In comparison, the Art Heritage journal evolved out of a different impetus. While the Journal of Art and Ideas opened up a platform for cross-disciplinary dialogue across visual arts, media studies, cinema, literature, sociology, and political science for the intelligentsia and an informed public; Alkazi in Art Heritage was very clear about his mode of address and the nature of his audience. His ideal readers were the viewers of art exhibitions, and that implied not just the urban, metropolitan art-going public of Delhi or Bombay, but those from towns and villages who did not have much exposure to the modern sensibility but had the experience of visiting temples, shrines or even puppet shows. To this end, he often broadcast his public lectures on art through radio and television in a bid to reach out to this audience. Instead of interdisciplinary and scholarly dialogues across various media, Alkazi stressed the interrelationship of various arts—what resonates with the visual experience of his public—as a recurring motto of his editorial remit. In this respect, Art Heritage had more in common with Marg than with the Journal of Arts and Ideas. Perhaps here a disjunction may be noticed between his practice of collecting high art and the genres of art that found entry into the pages of Art Heritage. The journal covers a staggering range of media from painting and sculpture, from ceramics to pottery, from printmaking8 to photographs.9 What may appear as an incoherent amalgam of culture and a dilution of focus on high art, can, on closer analysis, be read as a deliberate expansion of the field, and as serving the needs of an art pedagogy in a developing nation and its complex public sphere. It will thus not be far-fetched to invoke visual culture as the frame through which Alkazi viewed art. As a result, he often succeeded in gaining an anthropological understanding of art and thus avoided the privileging of high art as the only authentic domain of discourse. In this context, K.G. Subramanyan occupies a unique place as the most sought after contributor to Art Heritage. According to Alkazi, Subramanyan is a unique amalgam of an artist, art critic, a public ideologue and a culture theorist whose works reflect a broad definition of culture. Here is an artist who not only draws from the Gandhian ethos of socially relevant art but also Nehruvian cosmopolitan modernity. In addition, Subramanyan had had a long institutional presence in two of the leading art schools in India—Kalabhavana in Santiniketan and the Faculty of Fine Arts in Baroda. Alkazi, himself an institutional builder, had a deep respect for other art institutions. He kept a close watch on emerging artists and art historians as a potential pool of talent that could contribute both to the Art Heritage gallery and the journal. This often implied opening up the portals of gallery to artists who had yet to build a

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Above: Fig. 4a Munira Alkazi, Mother and Child, 1964, 36 x 22 in (93 x 56 cm) Below: Fig. 4b Munira Alkazi, Untitled, 1964, Drawing, 24.5 x 12 in (62 x 30 cm) Facing page: Fig. 4c Munira Alkazi in her studio in London, 1963

Fig. 4d Munira Alkazi, Untitled, 1960, Etching, 16.5 x 17.5 in (42 x 45 cm) Facing page: Fig. 4e Munira Alkazi, Untitled, 1960, Etching, 21 x 23.75 in (54 x 61 cm)

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Above, left & right: Fig. 5a, 5b Details of the installation of Devraj Dakoji’s ‘Stones’, Art Heritage, 1977 Above: Fig. 5c Early days at Art Heritage, 1977, with Devraj Dakoji’s exhibition entitled ‘Stones’. Mrs. Alkazi is seated at the desk Facing page: Fig. 5d Exhibition of Antonio Martinelli’s photographs of Corbusier’s Chandigarh (1977–2014) at Art Heritage, New Delhi, 2015

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reputation. (Figs. 6a–6c) In most such cases, the risks he took paid off, considering how many of these artists and critics came to acquire formidable reputations in time to come. In this respect, the Faculty of Fine Arts in Baroda was strongly present on Alkazi’s radar.10 Notwithstanding his keen interest in artists, art critics and art historians trained in leading art institutions such as the Faculty of Fine Arts in Baroda and Kalabhavana in Santiniketan, he ensured representation not only from other parts of India including the south,11 but offered patronage to modern artists working in obscure regions both in the gallery space and in the journal.12 What also strengthened the institutional stature of Art Heritage was the recurring mounting of retrospectives of at least fifteen major artists. Through this format, Alkazi was able to showcase and assess works of modernists who played a vital role in the history of modern and contemporary art in India. He held retrospectives of artists like M.F. Husain, F.N. Souza, Akbar Padamsee, Ram Kumar, Somnath Hore, Tyeb Mehta, A. Davierwala, Gobardhan Ash, Ramkinkar Baij, Haren Das, Devyani and Kanwal Krishnna, Devi Prasad, A. Ramachandran, Satish Gujral, among others. (Figs 7a–7d) Alkazi, in a way, participated in the process of canonization through such exhibitions that offered a comprehensive take on artists’ art practices as also through art criticism. Alkazi on Art Writing If the Art Heritage journal is taken as the main reference point for assessing Alkazi’s art writing, two opposing currents are evident across issues he has edited across almost four decades: one is a modernist proclivity to uphold the artist as a unique individual whose creativity is best told through the format of a monograph; the other is of a more generalized understanding of talent seen as dispersed across a variety of genres, mediums and social/cultural spaces. The first evolved out of his familiarity with Euro-American art history via his exposure to museums and galleries in the West, including his training in Britain; this was also reflected in his public lectures on modern art in Bombay and manifested most eloquently in his writings on F.N. Souza—an artist whose works he has collected since his foray into modern art.13 It was his expansive understanding of art that led Alkazi to invoke what today may be considered as visual culture, encompassing productions that range from painting, sculpture and ceramics to photography. This wide cultural span covering present and pre-modern art led him to question what constituted a canon. His experience in the West had made him dubious about the claims of universalism made by EuroAmerican modernism.14 Thus his delight in being able to exhibit in a London gallery where the likes of Henry Moore and others exhibited speaks volumes about how

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Above (left): Fig. 6a Invitation to opening of first exhibition of Art Heritage on Oct. 22nd, 1977, showcasing the works of seven artists Above (right): Fig. 6b Two-page foldout announcing the exhibitions of second season of Art Heritage, 1978–79 Below: Fig. 6c E. Alkazi’s note on the 1978–79 season Facing page: Fig. 7a–7d Art Heritage catalogue covers for seasons 1978–79, 1995–96, 1990–91, 2002–03

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Facing page: Fig. 8a Arpita Singh, Untitled, 1977, Drawing, 16 x 11 in (40.6 x 28 cm) Above: Fig. 8b Arpita Singh, Untitled, 1977, Drawing, 18 x 21 in (45.7 x 53.3)

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rarefied this space was considered by a cultural outsider.15 His sensitivity towards modernist exclusionary politics surfaced around the question of gender and was most visible in the way he invited women artists to exhibit in the gallery space of Art Heritage. Interestingly, Alkazi’s understanding of politics of representation manifested differently in the case of women and regional artists. While women artists continued to remain a separate category under the label ‘women artists’, regional male artists were usually integrated with the mainstream. (Figs 8a and 8b, 9a–9f) His understanding of gender issues in art differed from a feminist take.16 A strong supporter of women artists and women art critics, early issues of Art Heritage devote a large space to artists like Devyani Krishna, Arpita Singh, Anupam Sud, Gogi Saroj Pal, Arpana Caur, Rekha Rodwittiya, Tara Sabharwal, Anita Chakraborty, Jaya Ganguly, Chandana Hore, among others. His own essay on Arpita Singh, entitled ‘The Fluidity of Being’, subsumes gender concerns under a broader humanist engagement with the horrors of violence affecting men and women alike.17 His political unconscious is, however, betrayed in the use of the hyphenated designation of ‘women-artists’ defined in relation to the unmarked category of ‘artist’ assumed to be male.

Facing page: Fig. 9a Sudhir Patwardhan, Irani Restaurant, 1977, Oil on canvas, 56 x 35 in (142 x 89 cm) Above (left & centre): Fig. 9b–9c Letters from Roshen Alkazi to Sudhir Patwardhan, 1978 Above right: Fig. 9d Review of Sudhir Patwardhan’s show at Art Heritage by Aman Nath for India Today, 1979

A common thread of concern runs through his art writing, art collecting and documentaries on art for national television. He did not collect art works to satisfy a personal whim or a secret fetish, but rather he considered himself as a custodian and a trustee of the collection which had to be made accessible to the public. This vision itself sowed the seeds of a museum, which could house his collection to tell the story of modern and contemporary art in India.18 (Figs. 10a–10d). Alkazi’s vision on art was all-encompassing in its scope as best captured in his art documentaries which seemed to anticipate the making of his museum: ‘Modern forms stretch from photographic realism to the purest abstraction. Today, throughout the world there is no single dominant movement or style. One may say that there are as many styles as there are artists . . . even in the vast welter of styles, one can see certain patterns emerging and the perspectives of time will give the art historian a clearer more sharply focused picture of the art scene.’19

Left: Fig. 9e Sudhir Patwardhan, Man with Cylinder, 1976, Oil on canvas, 40 x 31 in (102 x 78.7 cm) Right: Fig. 9f Sudhir Patwardhan, Man on White Chair, 1976, Oil on canvas, 40 x 27 in (102 x 68 cm)

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In other words, for Alkazi the collector, the public was always present, however ambiguously it was defined, in the very practice of collecting. What emerged as the logical conclusion of such a preoccupation was the idea of a museum. The story of his engagement with the public is also the story of Art Heritage. Art Heritage emerged, evolved, and flourished because of this public and its involvement with its activities and vision. This public was a productive force as long as it remained this amorphous and ambiguous presence, between concreteness and absence, firing the imagination of Alkazi, the institution builder. But this rapport with the public did not last too long. By the 1990s, the dynamics of the art world had begun to shift with the onset of economic liberalization, which manifested itself in the mushrooming of private art galleries and new players in the art world that included international auction houses like Sotheby’s and Christie’s. By the turn of the century, international glossy auction catalogues began to circulate widely as did magazines like Art India that had a wide global reach. It is indisputable that, since its inception in the late 1970s, Art Heritage was clearly not only one of the prime art centres in Delhi but had a countrywide impact. However, globalization had begun to make deep inroads into the very structure of the art world, radically transforming its exhibiting, writing, and viewing practices. By the end of the 1990s, the proliferation of many private art galleries within Delhi and its outskirts, along with major shifts in the flow of global capital, had the inevitable effect of relativizing the salience of an iconic institution. Ebrahim Alkazi: Directing Art is the inaugural volume of a series of six. Subsequent volumes will include select reprints from the Art Heritage journal and catalogues that accompanied the exhibitions over a period spanning nearly four decades. This volume aims to connect Alkazi’s career as a theatre thespian with his pioneering contribution to modern and contemporary art in India. Two broad strands run through this volume: One is a historical and critical study of Alkazi’s forays into the art world via the theme of art exhibition and art writing, and his activities as art collector, institution builder, curator, documentry filmmaker and art writer within the wider context of the cultural politics of post-Emergency India, the controversies surrounding the Triennale and the fractured public sphere in a country as culturally and linguistically diverse as India. The second is a personal account of Alkazi’s life as recounted from an intimate perspective of family and friends. Chapter 1, by his daughter Amal Allana, offers a glimpse into the private space of Alkazi’s home. Chapter 2 is an interview of Alkazi by Yashodhara Dalmia centred on their common engagement with the Progressive Artists Group. Chapter 3 by Shukla Sawant offers a historical overview of Alkazi’s role in the art world of Bombay/Mumbai and the manner in which he negotiated the complex intersection of the metropolitan and vernacular public spheres through his exhibitionmaking practices and public lectures. In chapter 4, Devika Singh traces Alkazi’s transition from the art world of Bombay to that of the Delhi art world via the history of his exhibitions, collections and art writing. This provides a broad context for the emergence of Art Heritage gallery and journal, and analyses Alkazi’s promotion of Western art in India and that of Indian art in the West. Chapter 5 by Akansha Rastogi maps the terrain of art exhibitions curated by Alkazi from the late 1970s to date through the concept of the meta exhibition. She discusses not only the exhibitions that materialized but even those that remained potential curatorial imaginaries and explores the controversies surrounded them. Chapter 6 is an interview with Alkazi’s long-term friend and fellow institution builder K.G. Subramanyan by Parul DaveMukherji, in the course of which their parallel journeys are compared. Chapter 7 by Partha Mitter, an eminent art historian who has known Alkazi for nearly four decades,

Left: Fig. 10a Chittaprosad Untitled, late 1940s, Linocut, 7.53 x 10.53 in (20 x 27 cm) Below (left): Fig. 10b Chittaprosad, Untitled, late 1940s Linocut, 7.53 x 10.53 in (20 x 27 cm) Facing page: Fig. 10c Chittaprosad, Untitled, late 1940s, Linocut, 9.5 x 9 in (24 x 22.9 cm) Fig. 10d Art Heritage catalogue cover, 1985â&#x20AC;&#x201C;86

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sums up Alkazi’s contribution to the art world as an art patron, pedagogue and maker of art documentaries for Doordarshan and confers on the ‘young Arab’ the status of a nationalist—that too, when nationalism has acquired a deeply fraught meaning in these, according to Alkazi, ‘poisoned times.’ For Alkazi, after 2000, the public has become too concrete or too abstract a presence for it to really matter and the art market has brazenly made its presence felt. Even as state art institutions such as the Lalit Kala Akademi and the National Gallery of Modern Art are finding it difficult to keep pace with the development in the art world dominated by the private art galleries and foundations, Art Heritage has come under the pressure to reinvent itself: Alkazi has met this challenge by his receptivity to a new crop of artists, inviting them to hold exhibitions at the gallery and write for Art Heritage. Concerns around research and art pedagogy come to the fore and now it is around his massive collection of photography that many publications and exhibitions are organised. When the world of art writing began to be dominated by the art market, catalogue art writing flourished, and many private art galleries also began to bring out monographs of artists supported by them. Subsequently, the critical space of art writing itself shrank, and unlike many art journals that had folded up in the previous decade, Art Heritage continues to be published and, in fact, the most recent issue marks almost four decades of publication. While the art gallery has been a concrete reality since 1977, the museum is a notional construct. Nevertheless, Alkazi’s long standing engagement with the public dimension of the art gallery had already imagined the museum. Soon after the years of the inception of Art Heritage gallery in 1977, Alkazi clearly spelt out his objective: ‘The function of a Gallery [Museum], as we see it, is not the periodic arrangement of pictures on the walls with a view to their widest sale. It is to discern from amongst the confusing welter of current forms those shapes of thought which go beyond providing an insight into our poisoned times, by sustaining the precious miracle of creativity, man’s hope for the future.’20 (Figs. 11a and 11b) Revisiting this definition of a gallery after nearly four decades, one is struck by the interchangeability of the concept of a museum and a gallery.21 Alkazi’s understanding of a gallery in terms of an enduring humanism and his faith in art as a ‘shaper of thought’ may seem to be out of sync with our current times that have witnessed a profound transformation of the role of art, exhibitions and art writing under the onslaught of global capital. Despite, or perhaps, because of this anachronism, its apocalyptic tenor and its futuristic orientation, such a definition acquires a renewed relevance even for our ‘poisoned’ times. (Fig. 12)

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Below: Fig. 11a Haren Das, Joint Effort, 1963, Coloured wood engraving on paper, 6.5 x 9 in (16.5 x 22.8 cm) Facing page: Fig. 11b Haren Das, Housetop, 1965, Coloured wood engraving on paper, 8.5 x 7.5 in (21.5 x 19 cm)

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Notes 1. For Bombay as a locus of cosmopolitanism and its discontents, see Karin Zitzewitz’s The Art of Secularism: The Cultural Politics of Modernist Art in Contemporary India, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 71.

11. Josef James regularly contributed to Art Heritage (Art Heritage, vol. 9, 1989–90 on R.M. Palaniappan) as did Nanda Kumar and Sadanand Menon, even if the latter did not confine his attention to South Indian modernists.

2. Sonal Khullar, Worldly Affiliations: Artistic Practice, National Identity, and Modernism in India, 1930–1990, California: University of California, 2015.

12. See Art Heritage, vol. 13, 1993–94, Alkazi exhibited a littleknown artist, Kumar Mangalsinhji, from the princely state of Saurashtra, Gujarat. See Alkazi’s ‘Kumar Mangalsinhji: A Tranquil View of the World’, pp. 5–16.

3. Roshen Alkazi, his wife, had been instrumental in paving the way in the preceding years with the Kunika-Chemould Art Centre and the Black Partridge gallery in Delhi; a crucial experience that fed into the setting up of Art Heritage in 1977. 4. See E. Alkazi, ‘Editorial: Sponsoring Art’, Theatre Unit Bulletin, July 1954, vol. II, no. 7. reproduced on p. 275 in Appendices section of this volume. 5. It is a consistent feature of the Art Heritage journal to intersperse monographic articles on modern artists with contributions by specialists of Indian ritual, philosophy, and metaphysics as an effort to offer a cultural context. See, for example, Madhu Khanna’s ‘The Digitized Cosmos: Symbol and Meanings of Ritual Mandalas’, Art Heritage, 1989–90, pp. 88–93. 6. The formation of artists groups like the Calcutta Group in 1943 and Group 1890 in 1962 was accompanied by writings by the artists that declared their stance in the form of manifestos. 7. In Euro-American academia, this shift was almost coeval. See James Elkins, The State of Art Criticism, New York, London: Routledge, 2008, p. 85. 8. In order to give printmaking its due, he devotes a full issue to printmaking in 1985–86. 9. The range of topics covered by the inaugural issue of Art Heritage reveal a broad focus informed by an understanding of the Indian modern through the prism of tradition-modernity relationship: ‘Dhanraj Bhagat: Sculptor’ by Krishna Chaitanya; ‘Drawings & Linear Expressions: Six Contemporary Artists’ (M.F. Husain, F.N. Souza, A. Ramachandran, Bikash Bhattacharjee, Laxma Goud and Jeram Patel) by Mala Marwah; ‘The Painted Legend of Pithora’ by Jyotindra Jain; ‘Two Artists of Distinction: Bikash Bhattacharjee and Sarbari Roychowdhury’ by Jaya Appasamy; ‘A Quest for Art: Benode Behari Mukherjee’, translated from the Bengali by Modhumita Moujumdar; ‘Folk Myth and Tribal Ritual—Haku Shah: Some Aspects of Folk and Tribal Art of Gujarat’ by E. Alkazi; Retrospective—The Sculptor’s Vocation: Part I’ by A.M. Davierwala and Part 2: ‘Interview of A.M. Davierwala.’ 10. Take, for instance, his invitation to international students in the Faculty of Fine Arts Baroda, on a Commonwealth scholarship to India from Britain to exhibit in Art Heritage covered: Art Heritage, vol. 6, 1986–87.

13. Alkazi’s ‘Souza’s Seasons in Hell’, Art Heritage, 1986–87, pp. 74–93. 14. Kobena Mercer (ed.), Cosmopolitan Modernisms, MA Massachusetts: MIT, 2005. 15. ‘. . . I went around to some of these galleries and showed my work…and the Leicester Galleries take me up! The Leicester Galleries! The gallery that shows the work of Henry Moore and people like that! And people like Herbert Read turn up, people like Victor Pasmore turn up, a large number of people who are very eminent in the world of art there, turn up…at the gallery because it is a distinguished gallery and they come and see my work . . .’ For the full quotation, see Amal Allana, ‘A Space for Thought’, p. 45 in this volume. 16. By feminist take, I refer to pioneering work by Gayatri Sinha on feminism in modern and contemporary Indian art. See the Marg issue edited by Sinha entitled Expressions and Evocations: Contemporary Women Artists of India, vol. 48, no. 2, 1996. 17. Alkazi, ‘Arpita Singh: Fluidity of Being’, Art Heritage, vol. 10, 1990–91. 18. The value Alkazi attached to the act of collecting is reflected in his exhibiting the personal collection of prints of Jaya Appasamy, India’s renowned art historian and art critic as homage. Alkazi in his editorial of 1985–86 issue writes: ‘Two important shows are those of ‘Glass Paintings and 19th Century Prints’ from the Rasaja Foundation established by the late Jaya Appasamy. These will be held at the Lalit Kala Galleries, Rabindra Bhavan, and are in the nature of a tribute to her memory.’ Appasamy passed away in September 1984. 19. ‘Episode 2: Traditions and Innovation’, dedicated to Rudolf von Leyden, Indian Art and Modernism, 1995, dir. E. Alkazi 20. Alkazi, ‘Preface’, Art Heritage, 1979–80, p. ii. 21. See Appendix of 12/13 articles of Alkazi brought out in Theatre Group Bulletin which later became the Theatre Unit Bulletin; and the timeline for the Bombay years 1952–62 and that of the Art Heritage timeline which lists over 550 exhibitions mounted by Ebrahim and Roshen Alkazi at Art Heritage.

Facing page: Fig. 12 Bijan Choudhury, Seated Woman, 1964, Acrylic on canvas, 30 x 26 in (76 x 66 cm)

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A Space for Thought . . . Interweaving Art Practices Amal Allana

‘It was in 1948, I think within the first week of my being there (in Bombay), I somehow, graduated to see the Alkazi household . . . In fact, it was an induction into a whole world of total culture, by that I mean, high culture. Of course, it was high . . . it was literature, there was painting and of course there was drama, and no distinctions were made between them . . . they were just a part of living, and part of life . . . it leads me to think, somehow rubbing shoulders with real culture, that it is a-day today affair, and not a little injection that one is given to become cultured. So, it’s the whole time. It’s life which goes into it, and it widens people, it softens people. And I certainly think that the Alkazi family . . . particularly Roshen . . . was an extremely gentle, extremely kind, at the same time, a very determined person.’ Krishen Khanna, on the occasion of Roshen Alkazi’s memorial service, Triveni Kala Sangam, Delhi, September 2007

Ebrahim Alkazi, my father, belongs to a generation of people who spent their childhood and early youth under the British Raj. He, along with his contemporaries, experienced the breach with our traditions most acutely, straddling as they did the cultures of Europe and India, two divergent worldviews, a predicament common to most post-colonial subjects across the world. Seen in this context, the careers of the artists of Alkazi’s generation then become journeys towards forging links with the outside world while gradually rediscovering their roots in order to formulate a modern, yet Indian, identity for themselves. Along with his peers, the painters M.F. Husain or Francis Newton Souza, a writer like Mulk Raj Anand, a poet like Nissim Ezekiel or the filmmaker Satyajit Ray, Alkazi ideologically aligned himself, during those early years, to the pure tradition of European humanism, encompassing as it did a holistic and universalist view of art. In doing so, they had flung open their doors to the stimulating breeze of various continents, exposing themselves to a wealth of international traditions. (Fig. 1)

Fig. 1 M.F. Husain’s drawing of E. Alkazi’s production of Euripides’s Medea, Theatre Unit, Bombay, 1961

It was this same breeze that we inhaled as children, my brother Feisal and I, as it wafted across the Arabian Sea and in through the large, glazed French windows, into the expansive library of books that lined an entire wall of our diminutive flat on Cumballa Hill in Bombay. It was a breeze of tolerance, of the universality of the spirit, and it was this breeze that fashioned Alkazi’s concept of the intrinsic interrelatedness of all the arts, giving breath and substance to his vision, his ‘dramatic’ vision, if you like:

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‘. . . because that is what I felt. I felt that after the depression of the war, and also after all the hectic excitement of the freedom movement, now that the country was free, the whole world was there before you . . . and there was also the spirit of UNESCO . . . built on humanitarian values . . . and of a new civilized concept of the intermingling of cultures from all over the world . . . to be represented in UNESCO, in Paris, which was the cultural capital of the world . . . and therefore it was almost natural that UNESCO should be established there.’1 The Arabian Sea held a special magic for my father, and often as a youngster I would watch him at nights, standing alone on our little balcony, gazing out and across its rippling waves, as if spellbound, in deep rumination. His father, a Saudi Arab, had as a young man crossed this same sea in a small dhow, touching the shores of India and adopting this country as his own. Was my father reminiscing about the lost, forgotten homeland of his ancestors? Or was he contemplating the quirks of fate and circumstance, which drastically alter the course of personal destinies? Or was he simply experiencing Nature in all her magnificence and sensing Man’s frailty and insignificance in terms of her scale? Several years later, a similar image of a man, alone, lost in thought, seen atop a monumental fort on a dark night, manifested itself in my father’s production of Girish Karnad’s Tughlaq. In silence, Tughlaq stares out, contemplating the disaster he has wrought by shifting the entire populace of Delhi to Daulatabad in order to realize a dream. For me, it was the stance, the contemplative inward look that I found compelling, reminiscent of my father standing on the balcony at night . . . A hushed silence enveloped our home. Beethoven, Stravinsky, Begum Akhtar, Ravi Shankar—the gramophone playing 45s winds on. My father is absorbed in the music, eyes shut, a notebook and a well-sharpened pencil neatly placed in front of him, aligned at a perfect 90-degree angle to the corner of the table! His body, in the pose of Rodin’s ‘Thinker’, is relaxed, but at the same time suffused with a contained energy. Daylight breaks with its soft, pink light, the sounds of the sea and the sparrows melt away to be overtaken by the cacophony of BEST buses. He has been awake since at least 5 a.m., reading, and has already made himself a pot of tea. In a few moments he will offer a fresh cup to my mother, in bed, a small luxury that she appreciates without fail. I observe the ritual through drowsy, half-closed eyes, while the servants begin to shuffle noiselessly about their chores. My gaze shifts, to be caught by an African mask, then moves to Husain’s sensuous yet stately Blue Nude, hovers across a bronze Shiv/Parvati immobilized forever in their ecstatic embrace, and finally comes to rest on a seated Bodhisattva Padmapani, graceful in his tribhanga, composed, his eyes downcast, looking inward, in meditation. The whiteness of our studio flat, without walls to divide it into rooms, takes on the air of a temple or sanctuary, conceived, designed, and appointed by my father in such a way as to encourage one to look within, to meditate, to contemplate—a space for thought.

Facing page: Fig. 2a Euripides’s Medea, dir. by E. Alkazi, Theatre Unit, Bombay, 1961 Above: Figs. 2b, 2c Euripides’s Medea, dir. by E. Alkazi, Theatre Unit, Bombay, 1961

The simple, austere lines of the furniture, modern yet functional, sparsely yet aesthetically shape the space into areas for sleeping, eating, studying, and socializing. This loose definition of space, speaks of an attitude, a philosophy, where all daily activities are seen as part of an integral whole. There are no sharp distinctions between our private and social lives, just as there is no strong definition separating work from leisure. All work was seen as pleasurable and fulfilling, and so we ate, drank, did theatre, put up exhibitions or went on picnics with the same degree and intensity of enjoyment.

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Ebrahim Alkazi

Directing Art

The Making of a Modern Indian Art World

“…a valuable document in an area of scant research.” —The Hindu

MODERN & CONTEMPORARY ART

Ebrahim Alkazi

Alkazi Directing Art

The Making of a Modern Indian Art World

Art

Edited by Parul Dave-Mukherjee

364 pages, 408 colour illustrations 9.5 x 12” (254 x 305 mm), hc Indian Art World ISBN: 978-93-85360-10-7 (Mapin) ISBN: 978-1-935677-68-0 (Grantha) ₹5500 | $85 | £55 2016 • World rights

ve-Mukherji

Ebrahim Alkazi

Dave-Mukherji

Directing Art

The Making of a Modern Indian Art World

www.mapinpub.com

MAPIN PUBLISHING

Printed in India

MAPIN PUBLISHING

Ebrahim Alkazi

The Making of a Modern Indian Art World

www.artheritagegallery.com

Directing Art

Ebrahim Alkazi

Directing Art

The Making of a Modern Indian Art World

Edited by Parul Dave-Mukherji